Snark and Stage Fright by Stephanie Wardrop Page A

that want to look like Orville Redenbacher, the guy on the popcorn jar?” I teased as his mom ruffled his hair and said to me, “It’s a preppie thing. You’ll see.”
    And they were right—most of the guys did have on bow ties.
    I’d been so worried that throughout the whole ceremony everyone would stare at me, slapper of intellectual icons, but it turns out that at a wedding, all the attention goes to the bride. But even if they had stared, it might have been worth it when Michael held my hand as we settled into the pew and whispered, “You look really pretty.” A happy bubble swelled up in my heart and he kept his hand wrapped around mine for most of the ceremony and the warmth and strength of his fingers made me relax, little by little. The ceremony was mercifully short, and I managed to stand up and sit down at all the right times by following everyone else’s lead. Afterward, we threw birdseed at Rose and Sterling as they made their way to the limo and then Michael and I followed his parents to their car and drove to the local country club, where the hall looked like a castle made out of rough rock dug out of the beach. He and I walked into the little village and down the main street, looking in the windows of bookstores and the Vineyard Vines store and a bike repair shop just to kill time before the reception officially started. People in beach gear looked at us in our party finery, and I thought one woman, who wore an enormous Yankees shirt over a bathing suit that revealed too much of her butt, was going to snap a picture of us.
    “Did she think we’re some kind of human tourist attraction?” Michael laughed as we walked back to the country club.
    “Maybe she thought you were a Kennedy.”
    “Maybe she knows you are the famous slayer of pervy literary giants.”
    I stopped walking at the sound of that, but he was smiling, and he took both of my hands, brushed his forehead against mine, and mock cooed, “My little feminist avenger.”
    “Little?” I squawked and he cut off my laugh with a kiss that reminded me how absolutely incredible it is when his lips touched mine. Suddenly I couldn’t wait for the reception to be over.
    In the banquet hall, we shared a table with his cousins and, unfortunately, Catalina as well. Her parents were also in attendance, but I guess she was seated with us as the not-quite-children’s table. She looked really striking in an emerald-colored sheath and she spent most of the first course telling Michael about all the people they knew that I didn’t and practically cheered when the lobster was served. I ate both my salad and Michael’s because the restaurant had forgotten the request for a vegan meal. Michael wanted me to say something about it, assuring me that his aunt would be more upset about not getting something she had ordered than she would be with me for drawing it to her attention, but I wasn’t going to chance it. I talked for a long time with one cousin who had been to Burkina Faso with the Peace Corps and then an older distant cousin of Michael’s who made me laugh so hard a few times I feared the wine would fly out of my nostrils. He was an actual writer for one of the late night shows and knew everybody in Hollywood, but he just acted like a regular guy. When he saw me chatting away as if I had never had an angsty social moment in my life, Michael winked at me.
    While a string quartet played during dinner, an electrified band provided more danceable stuff afterward so Michael’s aunt Viv and uncle Reg coaxed all the young people out onto the floor. I am a hideous dancer—at least I assume so because I don’t think I could bear to watch myself do it—but Michael is surprisingly good for someone who is often a little stiff. Catalina danced right beside us the whole time and she had what I imagine were actual club moves, these shimmies and turns that were like a less risqué Beyoncé video. I felt so hopeless beside her I decided to just amp up my